My father came toward me, and he was somehow smaller than I remembered him, the authority I’d shrunk from my whole life gone quiet.

“Your presentation showed how much you’ve taken on,” he said. “How far you’ve come. We’re proud of you. Genuinely.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said. “But being proud of me now doesn’t replace the conversation you spent a year not having.”

My mother’s hands tightened around her purse.

“We’re sorry,” she said. “For refusing you shelter. For calling Grant behind your back. For thinking we understood your marriage better than you did. And for making the children feel like they weren’t wanted.”

I waited for the but. For the explanation dressed up as regret, the way her letter and every message since had always managed to smuggle one in.